Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Wild Bunch (Warner Bros, 1969)

We
can’t do justice to this great movie in a short blogpost. It would need a whole
book. And indeed books have been written on it. For example:

The Wild Bunch
is a 1969 Western which told the tale of the end of the West and which managed
to say something new. Amazing.

There
are such towering performances by William Holden (Pike Bishop) and Robert Ryan (Deke
Thornton) that, as they didn’t win Oscars, you wonder what Oscars are for. Many
actors were considered for the part of Bishop: Marvin (maybe), Lancaster (no), even
Stewart. Heston (uh-uh), Peck (yes, I can see that), Hayden (possibly), Boone
(in a way but no, not really) and Mitchum (yes, if he was firing on all
cylinders. He chose to do 5 Card Stud instead. Amazing, what a waste). Richard Harris and Brian Keith were considered instead of Ryan for Thornton
- thank you, Fate, that THAT didn’t happen; they would have ruined the picture.
Holden and Ryan were just right.
These were possibly the finest performances of their very distinguished
careers. Regular readers of this blog (both of them) will know in what high
regard I hold Holden as a Western actor. The Man from Colorado, Streets of Laredo, Escape from Fort Bravo, The Horse Soldiers, Alvarez Kelly, Wild Rovers, there wasn't a bad performance among them. Ryan
too was outstanding. The Naked Spur, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Professionals, Hour of the Gun, grief, he could even
elevate a junker like Lawman. These
were two magnificent Western actors and The
Wild Bunch was them at their very best.

Then
you have Ernest Borgnine (Dutch Engstrom) and Ben Johnson (Tector Gorch). Borgnine
never quite did it for me. He did 32 Westerns but unless you count Bad Day at Black Rock (in which he was
superb) as a Western he never really quite cut it. He looked the hard man alright but
for some reason never really convinced. An Easterner of Italian extraction, he was OK as a heavy in crime pictures. Maybe the Delmer DavesBadlanders which he did with Alan Ladd
was his best, Ladd’s weakness favoring his strength. But mediocre or not as a
cowboy, in The Wild Bunch he too is
superb (they all were actually). He is the very epitome of the grizzled old
gunman at the end of his career. And as for the mighty Ben Johnson, well, again
we’d need a book.

I have often had cause to refer to him in
these e-pages and his long career, from bit-part actor and stunt double in
early 40s oaters through those great Ford cavalry Westerns. Superb in Shane, he rescued Brando’s turgid One-Eyed Jacks (out-acting Brando by miles) and he was towering in Cheyenne Autumn, Major Dundee, Will Pennyand
Junior Bonner. 74 Westerns in all. Whether
the picture was good, bad or indifferent, Ben Johnson raised it. He was the
archetypal Westerner, utterly convincing and a very fine actor. We definitely
need a separate post on him (but then we do on so many actors. Cur tempus sic fugit?)

So anyway
that’s enough on the four principals. You get the idea. They are good.

As
for the lesser parts, the acting is outstanding: just follow Strother Martin (Coffer)
and LQ Jones (T.C.) through the movie. For me, after Holden and Ryan, the
laurels go to Edmond O’Brien (Sykes) and the larger-than-life Emilio Fernandez
(General Mapache). But you can’t forget the performances of Warren Oates (Lyle Gorch,
Ben Johnson’s brother). So many of these players were in 1969, appropriately, old
Western troupers towards the end of their careers. But there isn’t a bad actor
here.

What
many people think of first when talking about The Wild Bunch is the blood. Even now, after all these years and
all these viewings, the stunts and the almost cartoon violence shock. At the
time it was jaw-dropping. I will never forget the moment in the movie theater
(I was 21) when I first saw what Mapache did to Angel. But the violence is balletic,
terrible, beautiful, abstract. Technically stunning with brilliant editing (Lou
Lombardo), the (then) unprecedented blood and death scenes still have a power
to awe.

The
Oscar-nominated Jerry Fielding music is dark and brooding, atonal clarinets
over the gushing blood. Weird but wonderful. The photography by Lucien Ballard (left)
is very fine.The
climactic gun battle took 12 days to film, used 90,000 blank rounds and 10,000
squibs and the movie cost $6m, a huge sum then. The IMDb ‘trivia’ page is
2,481 words long and most of it isn’t trivial at all. Check it out.

The
Walon Green/Roy Sickner/Sam Peckinpah screenplay is masterly. The direction by
Peckinpah is of course great, inspired: original and powerful. This was his finest hour.

The
film is elegiac, moving, stirring, exciting and beautiful by turns.

Actually,
come to think about it, there’s nothing wrong with this movie. “I wouldn’t have
it any other way”.